January 31, 2011

Todd also provides addition links to relevant resources supporting this wide-ranging update to performance tweaking. He says "The most comprehensive place to find information on improving performance in After Effects is the Improving performance page in After Effects Help. Much of what is listed above can also be found there, plus much more."

Increase this value to leave more RAM available for the operating system and for applications other than After Effects and the application with which it shares a memory pool. (See Memory pool shared between After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder.) If you know that you will be using a specific application along with After Effects, check its system requirements and set this value to at least the minimum amount of RAM required for that application. Because performance is best when adequate memory is left for the operating system, you can’t set this value below a minimum baseline value.

AE Scripts has released ft-Toolbar by Francois Tarlier. This script gives the ability to make your own custom toolbar in After Effects with effects, presets, or any commands you use the most often. At first glance it seems similar to Quick Fx Palette (a 'button bar' for effects and presets).

January 29, 2011

Chris and Trish Meyer are taking the lessons in their book After Effects Apprentice and recording them as a video training series at Lynda.com. If they're like the book, the lessons will be project-based and methodical yet gentle.

"on using multiple strokes to build high-impact graphics in After Effects. This relatively simple trick is a great way to make your titles pop and stand out. All of the strokes are dynamic so if you change the font or text, the graphics will update automatically. We also use the Vegas effect to add dotted lines and even Vegas lights. This is a lot of versatility in this technique so get creative!"

Peder Norrby posted a free CS4 AEP of his Trapcode Particular experiment Frozen in time, which uses a Light Emitter driven by a wiggle expression, Aux particles trails that are frozen in time using a Physics Time Factor. Here's a render:

"Using the same basic technology that your computer uses, IP cameras take their own IP addresses and stream video directly onto a network without connecting to a DVR or control platform. Larger systems can integrate multiple IP cameras together using an NVR (network video recorder) that connects to and records multiple cameras at the same time. This capability can cut installation cost by literally thousands of dollars on sites where analog cameras would require long or complex cable runs.

Additionally, IP cameras frequently offer the additional benefits of higher resolution (with some models capable of 10 megapixels or more) and a more familiar platform for users to work with, meaning that they are also frequent favorites for smaller installations, too. Many forward-looking government, commercial, and even residential users are already standardizing their security on an entirely IP-based system, and most surveillance industry insiders feel this trend will continue into the foreseeable future."

January 25, 2011

Andrew Kramer released his "Tron-Pilot" After Effects CS4 project file and a short video walk-through which describes creating the faux 3D text in AE (adding the Vegas filter for a volumetric effect) and building a few expressions. The project was previewed in December.

There's some other tutorials to mimic the TRON look, and some background on the VFX of TRON: Legacy from Fxguide (on face replacement effects), [update: Talking Tron with Digital Domain at Motionographer,] and in numerous "Making of" videos like those posted by Digital Domain. Here's a few more tutorials for After Effects, veering off with a few on neon:

January 23, 2011

Total Training is opening the vault to free some classic tutorials by Brian Maffitt with a comprehensive tour of the Shatter plug-in. Brian says that "Shatter has since been updated to use comp cameras as well. Everything else should still work fine!"

Some related resources can be found at Motion Graphics Exchange and in recent posts here on presets and tutorials for gravity and bouncing (without the tweaks for rotation of course) . There's probably more on expression source AEnhancers. Here an example from Danny D:

"bringing his tools to the masses, putting the finishing touches on an open-source web application called ShaderLab which he plans to release within a few weeks. With ShaderLab, anyone will be able to generate 3-D fractal forms and interact with them in their web browser."

Here's a video generated [with a GLSL shader in AE, see comments] like you could produce with Beddard's real time WebGL 3D fractal explorer:

January 20, 2011

After Effects Facebook posted a useful tip today: "Use Collect Files (Generate Report Only) to get a list of effects, fonts, & files used. ...the Collect Files command gathers copies of all of the files in a project or composition into a single location. Using this command is a useful step before rendering, for archiving, or for moving a project to a different computer system or user account." For more on Collect Files, see Kingsley in After Effects File Management Heaven or Hell?, and Carl Larsen on the collect and consolidate features in his video File Management in After Effects.

Chris Meyer followed Adobe's tip (likely from Todd Kopriva) with a comment that "the report might miss fonts loaded by an effect (for example, text generation effects where you get to select a font)." So Layer Marker notes might be good if the project is to be archived.

January 18, 2011

“Cameras are notoriously difficult to get to grips with in After Effects. In this tutorial, Andrew Devis explains some of the behaviors and problems that are common to camera animation and then shows how … to create a simple camera rig, and why it is important to get the order of the layers correct to achieve predictable results.”

Sure Target 2 from Video Copilot is a free AE plug-in (with tutorial) that offers advanced control over the After Effects camera. An older version, Sure Target 1.5 comes as a preset that works with the VC 3D Falloff preset.

"The paint tools in After Effects are usually used for cloning or filling in mattes, but they can also be used to create stop-motion-style animation. In this movie you’ll see how they can be used to create a stop-motion style without the need for painful frame-by-frame tweaking of keyframes or drawings."

Project files and free background animations are posted on the Church Media Design (CMD) website. More on generating backgrounds, including a particle backgrounds tutorial from CMD, can be found in Looping backgrounds from CMD.

January 16, 2011

The influence of Cinema 4D in motion graphics continued to grow in 2010, and not just in making shiny balls. It's enough to spark interest in someone burned out on 3D from time in the Electric Image world.

News on the intersect between 3D and Affects Effects and compositing is often covered by Lester Banks, but there's a few new resources on Cinema 4D depth of field. As Quba Michalski notes, "Cinema 4D has a rather counter-intuitive method of producing depth of field. Both the camera controls and the way in which C4D handles depth maps can be a cause of major headache, especially for the newcomers to this program."

John Dickinson has created a new Cinema 4D DOF Quick Reference Guide, which "shows a top view of an actual Cinema 4D camera with extra visuals to help explain what the numbers in the Camera Depth Of Field dialog box are actually doing."

January 15, 2011

This script allows you to distribute the selected layers in 3D space. In addition to offset position, you can offset rotation/scale/opacity and adds some randomness. The “Factor” parameter allows non-linear offset between layers.

Some similar and not so similar 3D scripts from AE Scripts have been noted (eg, Trajectory, Multiplane, Matrix, 3D Layer Distributor, Create3DShapes), but DistributeLayers has not been mentioned here previously. Here's the demo:

"Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.

But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China."

The 12 days of VFXmas are on freddiew's other channel on YouTube and on Facebook. Episodes look behind the scenes with a range of content, including how After Effects is used to create homegrown action scenes. So far they've covered blood hits, greenscreen match lighting, track mattes, slow motion, blood splatters, background plates, rotoscoping, and more.

Angie Taylor posted Lip Sync in After Effects, teaching a task that most animators will be asked to do at some point in their career.

Update: Lip Sync in After Effects: Some resources was updated and moved to ProVideo Coalition, It collects a few more lip sync video tutorials for After Effects. They're very similar in using time remapping, basic expressions or converting audio to keyframes, etc. and not CC Split, Reshape, or other.

January 12, 2011

Jeff Almasol noted Silk, an experiment in animated generative art by Yuri Vishnevsky, a college student. It's simple but elegant, and headed to iOS. There are shortcuts for more functionality, like hitting the S or X key, or E, which generates a thumbnail of the picture which can then be saved as a PNG for compositing on black.

It's not so different from Flame Painter. Too bad that the open source AE Flame plug-in is stuck in CS4 (see Neosapien and Flam3); a JDI day for an AE script or Pixel Bender version of Silk would be cool though.

Fxguide has updated its "Art of" piece on stereo 3D with Art of Stereo conversion: 2D to 3D, by Mike Seymour. It looks at current post production issues, tools, some case studies, and adds a timeline of recent major 3D movies.

RAM previews in After Effects are not necessarily WYSWYG, even apart from OpenGL settings and usage, and this can be a difficult problem to unknot because of the number of settings and Preferences involved -- some of which are among the many things new in CS5.

"In the Previews preferences category, you can choose the quality and speed of color management and zoom [Magnification, display scale, PAR] operations used in previews. From the Zoom Quality or Color Management Quality menu, choose Faster, More Accurate, or More Accurate Except For RAM Previews.

The More Accurate Except For RAM Previews option uses the more accurate operations for manual previews and standard previews, but uses the faster operations for RAM previews[emphasis added]"

As usual Creating Motion Graphics is also helpful. Chris and Trish Meyer recommend keeping Preferences > Previews to "More Accurate" unless you have an older computer. For more on OpenGL, which might be best turned off for the most part, see OpenGL basics in After Effects at AE Portal.

AE Scripts has just released BG Renderer 2.0, an After Effects script that allows you to render your Render Queue items in the background so you can continue working with After Effects. It runs as a dockable panel that is saved as part of your workspace. BG Renderer now comes in 2 flavors, Basic and Pro, and both versions now require a very low cost license.

After 4 years of compatibility updates, script author Lloyd Alvarez has completely re-programmed how it works, to make it even more easy-to-use and reliable. With the new Basic version you can just render your queue in the background with a click.

[update: Lloyd added more on the AE-List, "The basic version uses low priority to make sure you don't see any performance hits while you continue to work in the foreground. However if the machine is only rendering (ie you are not doing anything else) then the render speed will be the same as if the priority was set to high. What low means is that if there are other processes happening, the cpu will give priority to those over the BG render, but if there isn't anything else going on then the BG render will get full cpu priority."]

The Pro version offer many additional features, including:

set prefs for the renders

post render actions which allow you to get "growl" notifications

send email (with log), send sms and even iPhone push notifications when your renders are done or you have an error

send a terminal command to be executed after each item in the queue is done rendering and put the machine to sleep or shut it down

If you are using CS3 or CS4 and have CS5 installed, you can send your CS3 or CS4 render to the CS5 render engine to take advantage of the new 64-bit goodness while keeping your work project in the older version

a portable app/folder feature that makes it easy to create an ad-hoc render farm quickly by simply copying this portable app to all the machines on your network and just double-clicking it to launch the render on that machine.

There's full instructions on AE Scripts, with a video tutorial for each major feature.

Stu Maschwitz is introducing a new Prolost "feature" designed to help you determine The Shot You Can Make, something needed because of the burgeoning options in new cameras. "It’s called the Shot You Can Make (SYCM) Simulator, and it’s sort of a 3D 'Marcie' for focal length and depth of field."

The simulator's "engine" seems to be the After Effects camera (controls and resources for it can be found in AE Help), souped up with some extras:

"Using a lens blur plug-in rigged with expressions, each 3D layer gets the correct amount of defocus for its distance from camera. The result is a simulation of the shot with accurate angle of view and depth of field."

"We have analyzed the brightness, color, tone, detail, grain and texture of some of the world’s greatest movies, paintings, photographs and historical photographic processes. The DNA of these masterpieces can now be applied to your own images with PhotoCopy. The color, tone and brightness of the original work are replicated while the texture, grain and detail are simulated. If you have images that you would like to copy and apply their attributes to other images, just create, save and apply these custom presets to other images."

Update: Marco Paolini adds, "Chatter won't be an issue in After Effects or any of the motion hosts. The grain randomizes and looks natural. Presets that contain texture are static and do not randomize."